A focus on this deep dissatisfaction is often the starting point in overcoming death anxiety.
IRVIN D. YALOMThe pain is there; when you close one door on it, it knocks to come in somewhere else.
More Irvin D. Yalom Quotes
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Some day soon, perhaps in forty years, there will be no one alive who has ever known me. That’s when I will be truly dead – when I exist in no one’s memory.
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You know, I think everybody I’ve seen has come from some other therapy, and almost invariably it’s very much the same thing: the therapist is too disinterested, a little too aloof, a little too inactive. They’re not really interested in the person, he doesn’t relate to the person.
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Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us.
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Reality always creeps in–the reality of our helplessness and our mortality; the reality that, despite our reach for the stars, a creaturely fate awaits us.
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Death loses its terror if one dies when one has consummated one’s life!
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Life is a miserable thing. I have decided to spend my life thinking about it.
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Mature love is loving, not being loved.
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One comprehends oneself in order not to be preoccupied with oneself.
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He had learned long ago that, in general, the easier it was for anxious patients to reach him, the less likely they were to call. (107)
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Live your life to the fullest; and then, and only then, die. Don’t leave any unlived life behind.
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My hunch is yes. It would certainly do something for those who are most ruthless, who tend to make others most miserable.
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Death cures psychoneurosis. In a sense all these neurotic concerns–fear of rejection, interpersonal concerns–seem to melt away, and people get another perspective on their lives. The important things are really important, and the trivia of life is trivialized.
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Rather, love is a way of being, a “giving to,” not a ‘falling for”; a mode of relating at large, not an act limited to a single person.
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It is wrong to bear children out of need, wrong to use a child to alleviate loneliness, wrong to provide purpose in life by reproducing another copy of oneself. It is wrong also to seek immortality by spewing one’s germ into the future as though sperm contains your consciousness!
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The pain is there; when you close one door on it, it knocks to come in somewhere else.
IRVIN D. YALOM